I Booked My Air Conditioner Repair Service Online

On the hottest night of the month, our air conditioner in the bedroom let out a death rattle and expired, leaving us drenched in sweat. I had been ignoring its warning signs for months (doesn’t cool at once, makes weird creaking sounds) and now this was my punishment.

Calling the main office of the air-con brand at 1am was out of the question, and I didn’t want to play phone tag with the dealer, so I did the next best thing—book the repair service on an app.

While most of us would balk at having a total stranger do house repairs rather than calling the neighborhood manong, these service apps are quite reliable, and the process is as simple as booking an Über. The app I chose was gawin.ph, which provides services for air-con cleaning and repairs, house cleaning, and minor carpentry works among others. Here’s what I did:

IMAGE screencap from Gawinph

1. Search and request for the service needed. Their homepage has a drop-down menu of services, and barangays and cities (the app only works in Metro Manila, for now). Once you’re done, submit your request (the app will require you to enter your mobile phone, email, and home address).

2. The app will look for a match. After a few seconds, the app will match you with a service provider that will accept you, based on the service needed and your location. It will also ask you what type of air-conditioner you have (window or split-type), number of units, date and time you’d need the service, then will send you a quote. For air-con service, the quote was *P500 for simple cleaning of a one-horsepower window-type unit.

*NOTE: The price quoted is usually the lowest for the type of service requested and is subject to increase on site depending on the state of the air-con; this could go higher (in some cases, much higher!) if the appliance in question needs further repairs.

The app matched me with Leonidas, which has a four-and-a-half-star rating out of five (a good sign!). If you want to actively look for a specific service provider, you can go to their reviews, and based on the stars or customer reviews, you can send a request.

IMAGE screencap from Gawinph

3. A confirmation message will be sent to your email.

IMAGE screencap from Gawinph

4. Through this email, you can correspond with your service provider. The Leonidas people chatted me up through the app to confirm the exact date and time.

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IMAGE screencap from Gawinph

5. The service providers will show up on the date itself, so make sure someone’s home. In the case of air-con cleaning, they asked me beforehand if there was a water source nearby they could hook their high-pressure hose to.

The service guys showed up quite late (still within the time frame, though) but they were very apologetic and polite. They tested the unit and dismantled it, and upon inspection informed me they feared the compressor was broken (repairing it would cost me a cool P5,000 and up) and that they had to take it back to the talyer to test it, promising to update me the next day.

Before leaving, they covered up the air-con hole in the wall with a clean garbage bag clipped onto the AC’s front panel, and cleaned up after themselves. In fact, they were so clean they even fixed my messy books underneath the air conditioner!

6. The next day, the Leonidas team called me up saying that my air conditioner had a leak and needed a change of Freon and cleaning. The total bill amounted to *P3,000.

They wanted to deliver and install it the next day, but we weren’t home, so they installed it two days later. It only took them less than ten minutes to install the AC and test it (with my son watching over them earnestly).

Would I book repair services from an app again? Because of this experience—and the sheer convenience—I definitely would.

*NOTE: The final cost is subject to the extent of repair and service, and also the type and brand of air conditioner unit.